V GENERAL CONCEPT OF HOLISM 103; 



in this world. The idea of Evolution as creative is the very 

 antithesis of this static absoluteness. - And this idea must be 

 decisive for us. Anything which militates against the idea 

 of the universe as progress and creative must be discarded 

 by us. The creative whole or Holism must not be confused 

 with the philosophic whole or absolute. 



Having warned against a philosophical misconception,/ 

 let me proceed to guard against a still more dangerous] 

 scientific misconception. The mechanical view of the 

 universe which has been, and to a large extent still is,t 

 dominant in science is in one degree or another at variance 

 with the conception here brought forward. 



The whole is not a mere mechanical system. It consists 

 indeed of parts, but it is more than the sum of its parts, 

 which a purely mechanical system necessarily is. The 

 essence of a mechanical system is the absence of all inward- 

 ness, of all inner tendencies and relations and activities of 

 the system or its parts. All action in a mechanical system 

 is external, being either the external action of the mechanical 

 body on some other body, or the external action of the latter 

 on the former. And similarly when the parts of the body 

 or system are considered, the only action of which they are 

 capable is their external action on each other or on the body 

 generally. There is no inwardness of action or function 

 either on the part of the body or its parts. Such is a 

 mechanical body, and only such bodies have been assumed 

 to exist on the mechanistic hypothesis. A whole, which is 

 more than the sum of its parts, has something internal, some 

 inwardness of structure and function, some specific 

 inner relations, some internality of character or nature, 

 which constitutes that more. And it is for us in this 

 inquiry to try to elucidate what that more is. The ' 

 point to grasp at this stage is that, while the mechanical 

 theory assumes only external action as alone capable of 

 mathematical treatment, and banishes all inner action, 

 relation or function, the theory of the whole, on the 

 contrary, is based on the assumption that in addition to 

 external action between bodies, there is also an additional 



